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Monthly Archives: June 2012

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Summer convention season is upon us, and most publishers take the opportunity to use the bigger cons to announce their plans for the next year. We’ve managed to intercept some of them from the L.E.M.U.R. satellite orbiting 22,300 miles above the earth, and are happy to spoil their plans. For the children.

DC

DC will no longer publish comics. Instead it will create and sell lines of merchandise based on the art of Jim Lee. Look for a glut of Batman figures, figurines, and girl’s panties. Also expect more figurines envisioning DC’s famous properties in a hyper sexy anime style.

DC will launch Crisis on Finite Earths, except set in the Marvel Universe as the Wolverine of Earth-X and the Spider-Man of Earth 3 finally meet and push the Gwen Stacy of Earth-1 off a bridge. Then the worlds collapse or something. Look, it’s just time that Marvel did this, too. Trust us, we’re pros.

Feeling that Miracleman rights are a little too close to getting sorted, DC announces they will hire Neil Gaiman to finish his run for them instead of Marvel.

Rob Liefeld will become Deputy Chief Creative Officer of DC Comics, assisting Geoff Johns. They will also collaborate on a new title, tentatively scheduled to be a reboot of Jack Kirby’s Sandman.

Marvel

Thor figures front and center this fall, as he becomes a single mom.

Marvel will incorporate hidden Mickeys in each issue of each title they publish. Readers are encouraged to document each occurrence and mail it in. Entries will be checked for accuracy and winners will be selected every six months for a free trip to Euro-Disney.

This will be Marvel’s last year at SDCC. Going forward they will be Spotlight Guests at the brand new San Diego DisneyCon the last week of July.

Marvel is being exceptionally tight-lipped about this Fall’s Namor War. Bleeding Cool reports that they’ve come up with a name and 6 promo images but have absolutely no idea what to do with them.

In the largest crossover of it’s kind, Kurt Busiek’s Astro City will cross over with Ed Brubaker’s Fatale and Jonathan Hickman’s Manhattan Projects. Nick Spencer’s Infinite Vacation will make an appearance, but 8 months late.

Top Cow has decided to drop the charade and simply call itself Tits Comics.

Boom!

Roger Langridge will take over as Editor-in-Chief, put snarks in every title.

Archie

Archie Comics will shock readers in November with “Who Killed Archie Andrews?”

Diamond Distributors

In an effort to improve customer service, Diamond will be breaking itself into 12 smaller independent distributors based on geographic region. Griff Moran, a spokesperson for Diamond, assures that these “Diamond Chips” will only be 1/12th as incompetent as the original monopoly. Expect this change in January of 2013.

This is a great week of comics, with TWO issues of Atomic Robo and some other stuff that’s good but ALSO TWO ISSUES OF ATOMIC ROBO! Yes, this is like Second Christmas for me.

ATOMIC ROBO FLYING SHE DEVILS O/T PACIFIC #1 (OF 5) and ATOMIC ROBO REAL SCIENCE ADV #3 – Okay, so Flying She-Devils is the next full volume and Real Science Adventures continues the collection of short stories. And I truly am excited they’re both out this week, but I’m a little confused why Red 5 is releasing them on the same day instead of spacing them throughout the month.

BERKELEY BREATHED OUTLAND COMP COLL HC – This will fit right in with your Bloom County collections. Or if not yours, mine. These are amazing collections, and IDW is going to become the new Fantagraphics (if only in the quality of their archival collections) if they keep it up.

FATALE TP VOL 01 DEATH CHASES ME – I just couldn’t remember what was happening in Fatale from month to month, so I’m hoping the move to trades is better for my ever-weakening memory. Issue 6 is also outthis week, but I’m not sure if that means the TPB is only 5 issues or if they’re releasing the collection on the same day as the last issue in some sort of strategic alignment/vertical integration. Almostcertainly the former, but the latter would be pretty interesting.

FF #19

LOEG III CENTURY #3 2009 – I confess: I’ve lost all interest in LoEG. It’s just to insular and referential, and if I’m being honest I just don’t like Kevin O’Neill’s art at all. He’s a fine draftsman, I just find his style too rough and angular for my tastes.

The Phoenix Force is one of the most feared and destructive forces in the Marvel Universe. Outside of destroying planets and instilling hope in some of the mutant community, writers have been woefully unclear as to what exactly it does. At last weekend’s convention, Jesse found a copy of Marvel’s in-house breakdown of the abilities and limitations of the Phoenix Force.

The Phoenix Force can do long division by hand, but CANNOT do shortdivision.

One of my favorite things about cons is back-issue diving. And one of my favorite things about that is discovering insane old Silver Age books. I thought I’d share a few I found at Denver Comic Con. None of these were a quarter, but they were all under $2.

I’ve never read a Blackhawk comic before, but that’s just Silver Age madness!

The superhero boom is obviously upon us!

I thought this was the same character from our, but I was mistaken.

A note from the editor right on the cover? Always a good sign.

I don’t have to explain why this is awesome, right? It’s Superman and he Guardians!

After what was undoubtedly a successful weekend at Denver ComicCon, I’m reigning it in for this week’s new and noteworth release.

DAREDEVIL #14

DARK AVENGERS #176 – A direct continuation of his Thunderbolts run, the cutover to Dark Avengers has been a breath of fresh air that I’ve been missing with T’bolts, so I’m going to hang in there for a while again.

GLORY #27

GODZILLA ONGOING #2 – NO, IDW. No. Bad IDW!!!

MARS ATTACKS #1

SAGA #4 – This book has been REALLY fun, and Brian K. Vaughn proves he can do sci-fi. Every time I think I have it figured out there’s a twist spinning it off into a new direction.

SNARKED #9

TMNT MICRO SERIES #5 SPLINTER – These microseries books have been a breath of fresh air, if only because there’s a beginning, middle, and end.

There we go, folks. Expect new reviews later in the week, including the cool experiment in Spawn #220. What looks good to you?